xix, 195 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : 23 cm

The West Virginia mine war of 1920-21, a major civil insurrection of unusual brutality on both sides, even by the standards of the coal fields, involved thousands of union and nonunion miners, state and private police, militia, and federal troops. Before it was over, three West Virginia counties were in open rebellion, much of the state was under military rule, and bombers of the U.S. Army Corps had been dispatched against striking miners. The origins of this civil war were in the Draconian rule of the coal companies over the fiercely proud miners of Appalachia. It began in the small railroad town of Matewan when Mayor C.C. Testerman and Police Chief Sid Hatfield sided with striking miners against agents of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, who attempted to evict the miners from company-owned housing. ... Thunder in the Mountains is the only available book-length account of this dramatic crisis in American industrial relations and governance. --From back cover

Originally published: Elliston, Va. :Northcross House, 1986

Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-188) and index

"On to Mingo" -- Everyone called him "Sid" -- The Battle of Matewan -- "We have organized all the camps" -- "The most complete deadlock of any industrial struggle" -- "It's good to have friends" -- "Our citizens are being shot down like rats" -- " ... to clean up Mingo County" -- "You saw nothing wrong in that?" -- "Don't shoot him any more!" -- "There can be no peace" -- "We'll hang Don Chafin to a sour apple tree!" -- "No armed mob will cross Logan County" -- "It's your real Uncle Sam" -- "By God, we're goin' through" -- "We wouldn't revolt against the national guv'ment" -- "The things are coming" -- "There was a different feeling" -- "I, Warren G. Harding ... do hereby command" -- "Bring your raincoats and machine guns" -- "Bullets were hissing back and forth" -- "Things slacked off after we ate" -- "These strange new craft" -- "The miners have withdrawn their lines" -- "It was Uncle Sam did it."

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